


Holly Jolly

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Party, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Set between seasons one and two. There's a Christmas party in the Hub, and Owen, half buried in memories of Diane, is having none of it. Or is he?
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Owen Harper & Ianto Jones & Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper/Ianto Jones
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	Holly Jolly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechup/gifts).



> For diaryofriversong, for the Torchwood holiday exchange. Written for the prompt: "Owen/Ianto, there is a holiday party at Torchwood & Owen & Ianto accidentally get caught under mistletoe so they have to kiss. feel free to also include any cute/funny things happening at the party from any characters."

It was his own sodding fault and there was no way around it. Owen would have skipped the Torchwood Christmas party if he had remembered for one bleeding minute that there was going to be one. He just forgot it was _this_ bloody night until too late.

The Christmas decorations had been bad enough. They'd gone up over the last couple of weeks, mostly Ianto's doing, he was fairly sure. It seemed like Ianto's kind of thing, maybe with a shot of Gwen tossed in. There never used to be holiday parties back in the old days, the Owen-and-Tosh-and-Suzie days, let alone Christmas trees in the Hub. Oh, Tosh always liked a bit of tinsel round her workstation, and Jack left wrapped sweets on the edges of their desks on Christmas and a bottle of good booze for each of them. That was the kind of Christmas Owen could get behind.

Then last year happened. Gwen's first Christmas with them, and Ianto doing his butler-y best to make up for the "my girlfriend is in the cellar trying to kill us all" bit, and somehow between the two of them, this resulted in the Hub glittering with sparkly plastic shit, a full-sized sodding Christmas tree, even the tourist office decked with some crepe and hanging bits and bobs. 

Last year, it was strange but almost nice, in a way the Christmases of his childhood hadn't been.

And last year was Diane.

He had got over her, as much as one could. A little sadder and a little wiser, isn't that how it was supposed to go? Or at least he _thought_ he had, until he started to feel the screws of tension winding tighter, cranking deep into some sore place inside him, as they got closer to the holiday and the Santas came out and the Hub started to glitter.

Somehow Diane, and the crashing blackness that had gone with the loss of her, was intimately tangled up with Christmas for him now, glittering tinsel wound around his heart and soul, biting deep until he could hardly breathe.

When he stopped and took a step back—got out of his head for a minute, which he _could_ do, on occasion—he recognized that there was a kind of manic cheerfulness to Gwen and Ianto's decorating this year. When he wasn't deep in the throes of feeling sorry for himself, he knew that it had been a bloody cock-up of a year for all of them. Sodding Jack Harkness running off, or being kidnapped, or whatever had happened to him, leaving them all to muddle through as best they could ...

And they _had,_ was the thing. At least he thought so, in his better moments. Somehow they had dragged together the broken pieces of the team that they'd had left, coming out of the Abaddon mess, and they had found their way back to something better, closer, _kinder_ than what they'd had before. They all had to lean on each other, and help each other. Ianto in particular was having a hard time, and maybe it was that, more than anything, that had helped him and Owen both get past a certain amount of lingering bitterness from everything that had happened before Jack's disappearance. Ianto needed them. They needed him. They all needed each other. There was a time when Owen would have run screaming from that kind of dependency, but he also knew that he wouldn't be standing here if not for them, if they hadn't all dragged him out of a bloody Weevil cage, and most days he was maybe a little bit glad of that.

Christmas still wasn't ever going to be his favorite thing, though. He had mostly ignored the rest of the team chattering about holiday parties and gifts in the comfortable knowledge that he wasn't going to be there for it. He was going to call in sick, or duck out early, and spend the day getting drunk in the darkest, least festive pub he could find.

Except they had a week straight of increased Rift activity, Weevil sightings all over the city, and to make matters even more miserable (though on brand for Cardiff in December) it rained for the entire week. They spent most of their time soggy, exhausted, and snapping at each other. Ianto got a nasty bite on his shoulder, and Tosh sprained her ankle, and in addition to patching up his accident-prone team, Owen got almost no sleep two nights in a row while trying to fabricate a new version of Weevil spray since it seemed like the city's Weevil population was developing a resistance to the old one. 

So when he hauled himself into the Hub after dark along with Ianto, both of them shedding rain and sleet, and maneuvering a highly spray-resistant and very obstreperous Weevil on a chain between them, the only things on Owen's mind were dry clothes, a drink, and not falling asleep on his feet, not entirely in that order. Christmas parties did not even enter into it.

"One ... two ... three ..."

They slipped off the chains and slammed the cage door on the Weevil. A second too late, it threw itself against the plexiglass barrier, rattling it and spraying them with saliva through the holes.

"When it comes right down to it," Ianto said, coiling the chain, "I greatly prefer Janet's charming demeanor and winning personality."

"Ugh," Owen groaned, wiping his cheek. "There we go, one test subject for the new Weevil spray, version whatever it is when I get around to it. God, I'm done in." He took a critical look at Ianto, who was pale and moving with jerky determination, coiling the chain around one half-bent arm. "How's the shoulder?"

"Fine," Ianto said, which was probably Ianto-speak for, "I am in agony and my arm is about to fall off."

"Right, we're going down to medical as soon as we're back up top and I'm taking a look at it." He groaned inwardly (well, he managed to keep it mostly on the inside), but it was only going to be a _little_ longer before his date with dry underwear and a bottle of Scotch.

"I don't need—"

"Mate, if that arm rots and falls off, Gwen's going to make me fill out paperwork. Just a routine check for infection and make sure you haven't popped any stitches, then you can go inventory your sock drawer or whatever you do to relax."

"My sock drawer is very well organized, I'll have you know," Ianto said with one of those quick little Ianto smiles, and Owen was too tired not to laugh, even though it wasn't much of a joke.

They left the chain on its hook by the cell-block door and went upstairs. As they entered the Hub, Ianto showed signs of dodging sideways toward the coffee machine, but Owen was well prepared for some kind of feint and, catching hold of his good arm, hustled him through the tinsel gauntlet and past the—wait a minute—table covered in a white cloth with Tosh and Gwen setting out glasses. What?

"Be there in a minute!" Ianto called as Owen muscled him down into the medbay. 

"Be where?" Owen hissed through his teeth. "Oh, wait a minute, the bloody party's not _tonight,_ is it?"

"Ianto, is your arm worse?" Tosh asked anxiously from the railing above the medbay as Owen sat him on the autopsy table. _She_ was changed into something dry, Owen couldn't help noticing.

"Is _this_ where the sod-all you girls got off to?" he called up, reaching for the antiseptic wipes and gloves.

"Oi, we caught _our_ Weevil," Gwen called down archly. "Not our fault if you boys took an extra hour. Ianto, how's your arm, love?"

"We had to chase it halfway to bloody Llandaff," Owen snapped. "Why is everyone worried about Ianto and not me?"

"Because he's the one on the table," Tosh said.

"My arm is fine." Ianto gritted his teeth and, at Owen's pointed glare, started undoing the buttons on his shirt to pull it down from his shoulder.

"Right then, Owen, you need to take a look at that," Gwen said.

"What do you think I'm doing? I don't need a bloody peanut gallery!"

The girls retreated, Tosh looking hurt, Gwen with a fine two-finger salute and a sympathetic glance in Ianto's direction. "We'll have the Christmas crackers and champagne ready when you're done!" Gwen's voice drifted down.

"Christmas crackers?" Owen said in horror. "It's not Christmas—wait—"

"Christmas eve," Ianto said, squirming a little and then holding rock steady as Owen dabbed at the seeping stitches with antiseptic. "The holiday party."

"Why are we having a holiday party? We aren't a sodding banking firm!"

"Gwen's been talking about it for weeks."

"I know she has, that's why I've had plenty of time to make plans to be elsewhere." He reached for the sharps drawer. "I'm upping your antibiotics. Weevil bite's nothing to muck about with. You know, I told you to say something if you noticed heat or redness."

"It's not," Ianto said, twisting around to look at his bared, antibiotic-mopped shoulder. "... much."

"Or oozing."

"It just started doing that."

"Do you _want_ to end up being the first one-armed archivist at Torchwood? This might pinch." He jabbed Ianto just below the Weevil bite.

"Ow! Bloody hell, Owen ... whoa—"

He tilted a bit. Owen caught him and propped him against the wall, then reached for a gauze pad to tape over the Weevil bite.

"Alien painkiller, you'll be fine, lightheadedness doesn't last more than a minute or two. Also a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Thank me later when you don't have to learn to jerk off left-handed."

"Must you be vulgar at _every_ opportunity?" Ianto muttered sleepily. He blinked, and opened his eyes wider. "You're right, the dizziness doesn't last long, does it?"

"The dizziness doesn't. Medical effects should last all night. How's it feel?"

Ianto stretched his arm cautiously, and he gave Owen a quick grin. There was more color in his face already. "Remarkable."

"Yeah, well, don't overdo it," Owen said, scooping up gauze wrappers and other rubbish. "Now, if you don't mind—" There was a loud burst of giggling from the main level of the Hub. "—I've a date with a pub."

"Owen," Ianto said. It was steady and serious, and Owen, somewhat against his will, turned to look at him. Ianto was pulling his shirt back over his shoulder, putting himself back together; it was almost like Owen could see his defenses going back up. But there was still something a little bit open in his gaze, like a door that hadn't closed all the way. "It won't be the same without you here."

"Life of the party, am I? You're not wrong, but—"

"Owen. You know what I mean. There's only four of us. You think Tosh and Gwen and I can have a proper party all on our own?"

"Oh, sod off," Owen said, and went to change into the dry clothes he'd been fantasizing about with a fervor usually reserved for calendar girls and sweaty football players.

He slouched out of the gents' in a loose jumper and track bottoms—all he'd had in his locker—and gave serious thought to just leaving. Instead, he went down to the main level of the Hub, where he heard cheerful voices.

Ianto had changed into dry clothes too—no tie, just a buttoned-down pink shirt without even a jacket over it; downright out of uniform there. He was on the couch and Tosh had just all but skipped over to him with a flute of champagne.

"Owen!" she said, seeing him, and skimmed over to give him a flute of his own. She leaned in with a press of her hand to his arm, her shoulder resting against his with a weight that let him know she probably wasn't on her first glass. She wasn't precisely dressed up, but there was a sprig of holly pinned to her shoulder.

"Are we really doing this?" Owen asked, looking around. There was a white-draped table, the one he'd whipped past earlier, laid out with snacks and cakes and—God help them, she hadn't been joking—bright-colored, ribbon-tied crackers, like they were all five years old. 

"What if Weevils attack?" Owen pressed. "What if the Rift opens and a horde of Mongols conquers Splott?"

"There will be no Rift alerts this evening," Gwen said, coming down the stairs from what had formerly been Jack's office. She actually _was_ dressed up, at least to the extent of having put on a skirt, a long purple one that swished around her ankles. She was carrying a bottle.

"I don't think that's up to you," Owen said.

"It is absolutely up to me, Owen Harper, because if we get a Rift alert tonight, we are going to ignore it."

There was the tiniest of gasps from Tosh.

"Even if there's a herd of twenty-foot-tall pink dinosaurs rampaging around downtown Cardiff eating holiday shoppers," Owen said.

"Even if," Gwen said flatly. "We're exhausted, we're worn to the bone, and tonight we are going to relax and have fun." She thrust the bottle out. "Top shelf bourbon from Jack's private stash. We're drinking it tonight."

"Oh, _hello,"_ Owen said, and pounced on it. "I take it back, I can stay for the first course anyway."

"I thought we were toasting with champagne, weren't we?" Tosh said, a trifle plaintively.

"Still got that too," Owen declared, holding it up.

They each ended up with a champagne flute in one hand and a tumbler of bourbon in the other. It was very Torchwood. Myfanwy had swooped down and come to perch on a high railing above the table, looking down with her head cocked curiously to the side. She had learned that unusual doings below, especially those involving tables and fancy dress, often led to scraps for her.

"Owen," Gwen muttered, nudging him, "stop drinking, we have to toast."

"Oi, I wasn't." The champagne was only half gone. Bloody too-sweet swill, couldn't even get properly drunk on it, didn't really count anyway.

"Are we going to have a toast before Owen drinks everything?" Ianto asked from the couch. He was smiling with disarming sweetness, and looked actually _happy,_ big change from normal, alien painkillers must be having more of an effect than Owen had thought.

Gwen held up her two glasses with a flourish that got everyone's attention, but then she just hesitated for a moment. Lowering them, she said, "To be honest, I don't have a toast. It's been an absolute _arse_ of a year. Let's eat."

With that, she held out her glasses—Ianto leaned forward; Owen and Tosh clinked theirs, in a two-handed eight-way orgy of glass clinking—and then Gwen made an attempt to drink from both glasses simultaneously. It worked to an extent, but champagne went down her front.

Owen swigged his champagne to get rid of it, and settling in with the bourbon, wandered over to have a better look at the buffet table.

"Did you girls lay all this out while we were out catching Janet's uglier niece?"

"Ianto had bought it already and it was all ready to go," Tosh said. Across the table from him, she was picking up things to nibble on, loading a plate. "Thank you, Ianto." She smiled at him.

"Except the crackers," Gwen said. She refilled her champagne glass. "Those are mine."

"Those—wait—did you _make_ these crackers, Gwen? Did you actually sit around wrapping these rather than buying 'em five quid for the dozen?"

"Tosh," Gwen said, "you get Owen's cracker then."

"Do they have names on?" Owen said in disbelief. 

They did. He found the OWEN one, written in Gwen's looping hand. The paper was black with silver snowflakes. Tosh's cracker had dark blue paper with stars on. Ianto's had a plaid pattern. Gwen's was gold and green.

"Gwen, love, did you make yourself a cracker and wrap it up, and if so—"

"Ianto made mine," Gwen said, her color high.

Owen picked up his. It was strangely heavy and clinked when he moved it. He held it across the table.

"Tosh, if you'll give me a hand, girl—"

"Careful!" Gwen said. "Not over the—"

The cracker ripped apart. It didn't pop, it just tore, and a cascade of small alcohol bottles burst out of it and clattered across the table. One ended up top-down in a cake. There were also some small sweets and the obligatory paper crown and slip of rubbish joke paper.

"—buffet," Gwen said. "Did any of them break?"

None of them had. Owen picked one up: Bailey's Irish Cream. "Gwen," he said, "you're my favorite."

"I bought it all," Ianto said from the couch.

"Then you're my favorite." He held out the Irish Cream to Tosh. "Here, you helped me pull it. This is your reward. Or take your pick."

"I'll take the cherry liqueur actually," Tosh said, her cheeks pinking. "Thank you, Owen. Are we doing crackers now? Where's mine?"

Gwen helped pull Tosh's cracker, which was mostly full of sweets in gold wrappers, much fancier than Owen's; clear to see who the favorite was here. There were also a pair of earrings on a little white card, a keychain calculator, and a dark blue crown with sparkly silver rhinestones that Tosh placed neatly on her head.

Gwen waved the end of her cracker at Owen, so he resignedly pulled it. The paper ripped open: more gold-wrapped sweets, a lipstick, a utility knife, and a hair tie.

"So if this continues on pattern," Owen said, "looks like I'm the one who gets to pull Ianto's." He grinned at Ianto cheerfully, swiping the remaining, plaid-papered cracker off the table.

"Owen," Ianto said.

"What? Perfectly innocent fun, helping a mate pull his cracker, do it all the time—"

"I knew one of you was going to make me regret this," Gwen said, although she looked like she was trying not to smile. "Owen, give that to Ianto."

Owen would have kept pushing it, except that Ianto's painkiller-laced good humor seemed to be rapidly fraying, so he leaned close enough that Ianto could grab the paper end with his good hand. Ianto didn't take the bait, looking like he expected some kind of prank.

"Oh, come on, I'm not going to yank it away." Owen waved it at him. "Anyway, if you bought everything, you already know what's in here."

"Gwen bought mine," Ianto said.

"And all of this has been going on behind my back." Owen felt a tug of envy, twisted dark by all too familiar bitterness.

"Owen, you've been an absolute Scrooge to all of us this month. Anyway," Ianto added, a slight smile turning up the corner of his mouth as he reached out to grasp the end of the paper, "while the rest of us were running about doing Christmas things, _someone_ had to mind the Hub."

"Good to know I'm useful for something." And they pulled together, managing something like near-perfect sync.

Ianto's cracker sprayed forth a couple of small bottles of booze (but not the barstravaganza of Owen's), a tiny rolled-up memo book with a little magnetic pen, a pocket grooming kit, a few sweets, and a crown of silver paper.

"Gonna wear this?" Owen asked, helping him pick up the pieces that had fallen to the floor or rolled under the couch.

"Ianto, you must," Gwen said, fitting hers (gold) over her ears. "Owen, you too."

Ianto looked deeply pained, but to Owen's disbelief, he put it on. His right arm was still stiff; Owen reached up to help him tug it down as he fumbled with it clumsily.

There was a rustling and abruptly something flimsy and papery settled over Owen's head, tipping down over his ear. Owen reached up with a yelp, groping at it. There was a giggle and he looked around balefully to find that Tosh, the culprit, had retreated to the shelter of the buffet.

"It looks good on you, Owen," she said from behind her hand.

"I look like a bloody twat, like the rest of you." But he left it on; there was no point in turning the entire evening into a game of Pin the Crown on Owen.

Myfanwy squawked from her seat on the topside railing.

"Has she been fed?" Ianto said, starting up. Owen, being in a position to do so, pushed him back down onto the couch. "Someone give her chocolate, that'll settle her."

Gwen went up to do it. Tosh fell on the buffet with single-minded intensity. Owen loaded a plate and then, for lack of other comfortable places to sit, came over and flopped on the couch next to Ianto, who eyed his plate. Owen put a hand over it.

"Mine."

"Don't get up, Ianto," Tosh called. "I'll bring you something, if you tell me what you want."

It was weirdly peaceful as things began to settle down. The Rift actually _was_ being quiet for a change, though Tosh had her PDA next to her—she was sitting on the rug, a loaded plate on either side of her—and kept glancing at it. Gwen came down shortly from the upper reaches of the Hub, with a few scratches that hadn't been there before, and started loading up at the buffet.

Ianto leaned over and nudged Owen lightly.

"What?" Owen said.

Ianto flicked his eyes up, and Owen looked. There was some kind of scruffy greenery hanging above Owen's end of the couch.

"Mistletoe," Ianto said.

"How long has that been—who put that—Gwen!"

"It's been there all day," Gwen said from the buffet. "I was wondering how long it would take anyone to notice."

Ianto raised his eyebrows, and Owen gave up. Blame it on the holiday, on exhaustion, on the mistletoe or maybe just the awful bloody year they'd all had—

If he was expecting a thorough snog, he didn't get one. Instead, Ianto pressed his lips carefully, ever so carefully, to the corner of Owen's mouth.

"I'm glad you stayed," he said, very quietly, and that, just that, disarmed all of Owen's defenses in a single instant.

He was still feeling stripped bare, laid raw to the world, as Gwen settled beside Tosh on the rug. But it wasn't a bad feeling, exactly. More of a too-sensitive feeling, like being exposed to the sun after months in the dark.

"Mistletoe," he said, a bit hoarsely—it was hanging above the girls too, or near enough—and they both, as one, looked up. 

"Oh," Gwen said, "well, all right," and pecked Tosh on the lips. Tosh giggled, and quickly kissed her back, and dug into her tiny sausages and cheeses.

Ianto's good shoulder came to settle against Owen's, and as if that wasn't enough, Ianto stole one of Owen's biscuits.

"Oi! You have your own." But Owen didn't shrug him off. Like taking off the sodding crown, which had now slid across his forehead, it just seemed like too much trouble. "You know, I'm thinking it's a bad idea to mix champagne with alien painkillers." Even though Ianto didn't seem the slightest bit drunk.

"Owen?" Ianto said. 

"Yeah?"

"Shut up," Ianto said, and kissed him again. Light soft lips, very gentle. Full mouth this time.

It was a pretty effective way of getting him to shut up, all things considered.

***

The Rift monitor didn't go off all night, as if it knew well enough that it was on notice if it did. Christmas bloody miracle. Owen woke in the morning in a heap of fellow Torchwood employees on the rug, with blankets pulled down over them and Gwen against his back and Ianto's head resting on his shoulder, face pressed into his neck. Someone's crumpled crown, possibly his own, was poking him in the ear. And Diane's ghost had washed away, faded to the faintest of echoes in the Christmas morning light throughout the Hub.


End file.
